STOCKTON - The idea came to Ed Bonilla in mid-March, blooming like the branch of a tree in the sunshine of early spring.

Bonilla and his students were preparing that day to embark upon a beautification project at Stuart Gibbons Park in north Stockton. As they surveyed the scene, they saw a tagger's decoration of the park's barbecue pit.

"R.I.P. Centeno" it read, and Bonilla knew what he had to do.

The 40-year-old Bonilla, who teaches a group of expelled Lincoln High School students in a small program on the old Village Oaks campus, quickly contacted 29-year-old Heather Centeno.

Long ago, she had been one of Bonilla's creative-writing students at Lincoln High. In February, Centeno's 21-year-old brother, Alexander, died from a gunshot wound in what police have said may have been an accidental shooting by his friend.

Bonilla knew his students would have to paint over the tagging at the park. But he also wanted them to pay lasting tribute to the late Alex Centeno by planting a tree in his memory.

Thursday afternoon, Heather Centeno stood in the park watching with her parents and a stepsister as Bonilla's students dug a small hole and planted a Norwegian pine for Alex. His mother, Toni Sannella, stood nearby and fought back tears.

"We're going to miss him, we're going to miss him so much," she said. "He didn't deserve this. He would give you the shirt off his back. It's so clichéd, but it was so true."

Right after the shooting, police reported finding a "small amount of narcotics" in the Holiday Drive duplex where Alex lived and where he was shot, allegedly by his 19-year-old friend. A neighbor quoted in a newspaper article after the shooting made less-than-complimentary comments about the duplex's residents.

But relatives say that on Feb. 19, when Alex died, he had been getting his life in order. Three months after Alex's death, Sannella and other relatives, including his grieving father, spoke of the young man they loved and lost as they watched the planting of the tree.

Sannella, 58, remembered a boy who loved riding his skateboard, playing baseball and going camping. Alex's father, 60-year-old John Centeno, will forever miss his "fishing buddy," the boy he hustled to San Francisco in 2002 to see the Giants play in the World Series. Katie Tucci, 31, misses a generous stepbrother who "saw the best in people even when it wasn't there."

Loved ones called him Zander, a decades-old nickname born when his older brother, two years his senior, could not pronounce "Alexander." Zander, though, had no trouble with pronunciation when he began to speak. He was the baby of his family, soaked in adoration.

"His first word was 'soda,' " Sannella recalled. "Not 'mommy,' not 'daddy' ... 'soda,' because his three older sisters used to sneak him soda."

Zander made mistakes as a teen, his family acknowledges. He was expelled from Lincoln High, according to Heather Centeno, and he never earned a high school diploma, though he did obtain a GED.

"There was never any violence in his life," his mother said. "He was smart as a whip and he did dumb stuff. He was a loyal friend. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for anyone else. He never hurt a soul."

On Jan. 16, Zander celebrated his 21st birthday. He had recently moved out of his mother's place and into the Holiday Drive duplex, had bought a car and had started attending San Joaquin Delta College.

"He was smart as hell and could have done whatever he wanted to do," Heather Centeno said.

John Centeno, says he spoke with Zander on the phone two days before the shooting. Zander was struggling to take another step forward, his father recalls. He wanted to change his living arrangements.

"I need to get out of here," Zander said, according to his father.

Recalling the conversation Thursday, John Centeno said, "I told him, 'You're going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, son. When you're dead, you're dead.' "

After the shooting, suspect Andrew Torres was quickly arrested. Torres is being held at the San Joaquin County Jail as he awaits trial. Sannella said she doesn't know what happened the night Zander was shot, but she feels for Torres' mother, and for Torres, too.